Im looking for someone in our area that can help us with planning an rolling an upgrade of our pbx.
Expert? Don’t think anyone here can claim to be an expert! … But there are several folks around that do this for a living. What you want done wouldn’t require someone local. SchmoozeCom (tonylewis) can easily work remotely with you for the deployment. The beautiful thing about this whole thing is the ease with which it can be set up and administered remotely. For instance…I’m sitting in my camper at the racetrack at Talladega and I’ve been on my system several times resolving problems and setting up phones, etc. Things I didn’t want to delay until I get back in the office.
The only thing you need someone local for is physically installing the phones and server, and that’s just regular it stuff.
Bill,
Concern i have is, the original system was put in by another company who told me they did some tweaks to the source… I have no clue if that is true or not. Our business is also damn near 24.7, i have very small windows to take systems down, my fear is how to plan, review the system upgrade and if we attempt a remote access an things go wrong and something happens even in the bubble of the net… we would be lost with out phones an miss our Window of returning service.
Thats the main reason I was looking to speak to someone local maybe. If I cant find anyone then I have no choice but to attempt a remote
Why don’t you get Tony’s folks to take a look at what you have. Then you can make a judgement as to what you need to do. Since the price of hardware is not that great, I’d really look at building up a whole new server which would minimize your downtime. Then if there are any problems, you still have your system intact.
Agreed the main experts are the Schmooze people; I am local but don’t frequent this board too often (hang out over at PIAF). Will PM some contact details if I can figure out how PM’s work here 
We’re based out of Mississauga and have extensive experience with FreePBX, Asterisk and the whole bundle (we actually roll our own customized version and have been making extensive customizations to both the core system and “helper” interfaces and components for several years now). I’ll send you a PM with contact details incase “atsak” hasn’t taken care of all your needs already
I love it when someone comes in here bragging about their expertise and all the custom changes they do but miss the one obvious thing. FreePBX is GPL so where are these changes. As suggested by the GPL all these changes should be submitted back to FreePBX.
No, they just have to provide the source code, on request, to anyone they provide the software to – of course since this is all scripted the source code is the software. There is no requirement to “submit back” anything to the original author. This is how open source projects get forked.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic
jolouis
Thanks for the clarification but when I read things like make extensive changes to the core system that makes me wonder why changes that are so great for core are not coming back. Our company as a sponsor of FreePBX constantly give back changes we make to help improve the greater good of the project. That is all I was asking for.
Oh boy all this over simply looking for help with a product.
Do not want to hijack a thread. Sorry for that. Its just we all put in so much work into the project and its disheartening when users make changes that could benefit the project as a whole and do not offer them back. That is the heart of open source.
Forking is fine for OpenSource in a traditional fork as the source is available for anyone to grab and use and other projects can bring back the changes from the forks.
Well let’s not go hijacking this thread for GPL discussions. As the person who made the “offending” comments allow me to clarify here. The customizations that we do are usually in the form of modules (that follow the FreePBX module architecture), or dialplan changes and customizations to handle specific user requirements. Submitting these type of alterations back to trunk doesn’t make any sense since they’re not going to provide any benefit or be of any use to other FreePBX installs.
There have been a few bug fixes that we have implemented but in the FreePBX trunk these changes have already been handled when we go to file them, they just didn’t exist on the versions that customers were running.
Just a comment, forking things up has so far forked up Trixbox and soon Elastix. If you have the bottle and abilty, then go unethical, It will be hard for you ethically or practically to un-fork yourself if you need to add any new core function from FreePBX/Schmooze, as they now are wrapping up their efforts encrypted by Zen. Perhaps less “open-source”, which I regret, but at least protecting their IP to a certain extent from the leaches.
OK,
let’s all take a deep breath.
There’s a class of ‘users’ who come along wanting to be ‘sponges’ often soaking information from ‘all of us’ but not wanting to provide anything back.
Sometimes there’s a bit of a ‘reaction’ when reading a post like “we actually roll our own customized version and have been making extensive customizations to both the core system and “helper” interfaces and components for several years now).” in the same breath as responding to a solicitation of paid help…
I think miken32 is correct in as far as the requirement is that those source changes MUST be made available to jolouis’ customers but nothing would ‘force’ him to give it to any of us though if we know one of those customers, they are completely free to do such… I also know that many of us are very busy in our businesses and don’t even think about saying “hey FreePBX team, I’ve made a lot of change, it just occurred to me they might be valuable ones to contribute back to the project.”
Having read jolouis’ other posts, it seems like he is genuinely here to help others when he finds the time to get on the forum board, he is not being a ‘sponge.’ I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it did not occur to him and let him ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ my trust by making an open request:
Jolouis - sounds like you may or may not have useful changes you guys have made. Can you PM me or if you prefer just reply to this forum post with information on where we can see those changes and see if there are useful things that could benefit the project, or otherwise get in touch with me about this subject?
How can i remove my self from my own thread watch
morrice:
go here:
http://www.freepbx.org/user/morrice
and on the subscription tab un-check this thread. I would have done it for you but this way you are being informed and now know:)
dicko:
we are not encrypting the open-source code. There are encrypted commercial modules and a few of them are even free but for various reasons are still commercial. The open-source code will not be encrypted and there is plenty happening there.
Phillippe,
My apologies for misunderstanding your sysadmin and routing and trunking enhancement modules which are free, but commercial (hmmmm . . .), yet apperently encrypted, are you saying I don’t need to install Zenguard to have them work, and explore/tweak the code? . . . Please let me know how to do that 
dicko,
those are commercial modules, they have different licenses and are not open source, and are not part of the project.
we have created the commercial repository so that other entities can provide commercial modules (wether encrypted or not). There are also other commercial modules out there in the eco-system from providers who have not yet chosen to be part of the commercial repository which is why we have the tarball upload option as well in Module Admin.
I understand, and I am glad you have so stated for the first time that I am aware of, that FreePBX is no longer fully an “open-source” project. That really needed to be clarified, and that non open-source code will be installed on your system if you download and install your iso’s.
Regards.
Dicko.
I guess I missed the part where fully open source distributions like CentOS and Ubuntu have no encrypted code. “Open Source” does not mean 100% free.